Wall Street Journal: To Fix Water Crisis, Brazil Turns to Big Projects

[Judi Lynn]

To Fix Water Crisis, Brazil Turns to Big Projects

A plan to tap a long-polluted dam to alleviate a punishing water shortage draws fire



An aerial view shows illegally built slums on the border of the polluted water of Billings reservoir in São Paulo. Photo: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters


By
Reed Johnson And

Rogerio Jelmayer

April 6, 2015 5:41 p.m. ET

SÃO PAULO—As he stood by the dam that is a last hope for this Brazilian megacity to avoid water rationing, marina worker Valdir Mastrocezari saw a problem. He also smelled it.Baking under the noonday sun, near the drought-exposed shoreline of the massive Billings reservoir, was a foul soup of raw sewage laced with human excrement.

The state government plans to use treated water only from non-polluted parts of the reservoir to ease the epic drought that has devastated southeast Brazil, the nation’s wealthiest region. But the proposal has drawn criticism, as scientists warn that high levels of fecal coliform and other contaminants make it dangerous and a costly proposition.

It is one of several controversial proposals to fend off a water crisis that many Brazilians, including Mr. Mastrocezari, believe is largely man-made and might have been ameliorated, if not avoided.

“If they want to use this water, they will have to stop this [pollution] first,” said Mr. Mastrocezari, 56, who blames contaminants for a nasty rash on his arms. “People don’t swim here. We avoid putting our feet in the water.”

More:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-fix-water-crisis-brazil-turns-to-big-projects-1428356501

[Trillo]

1. I recall that many folks told them not to destroy their rainforest.

Drought was one of the predicated outcomes.

Decades of destruction in the Amazon rainforest might be the reason that Brazil’s taps are running dry, Brazilian scientists say. Deforestation is crippling the jungle’s ability to pump moisture into the air, which could be causing drought across broad swaths of the South American country, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

“With each tree that falls, you lose a little bit more of that water that’s being transported to São Paulo and the rest of Brazil,” Philip Fearnside, a professor at the Brazilian government’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon, told AP. “If you just let that continue, you’re going to have a major impact on big population centers in Brazil that are feeling the pinch now.”

Beginning in 2008, the Brazilian government began using satellite imagery to track deforestation, which has destroyed about 20 percent of that country's rainforest, according to the Associated Press.

Now they're going after poor people. Well, the article is from the Wall Street Journal.

[Judi Lynn]

2. I think large numbers of people nearly swallowed their tongues hearing Murdoch bought the WSJ.

It wasn't that fantastic before, but they did used to have good reporting, at one time.

It's a shame more of the people involved in destroying the world's very lungs in Brazil's forests aren't doing long, long sentences in prison. Unfortunately, it appears a lot of them have enough power and wealth to buy off the local authorities, or even have people who stand in their way assassinated.

Almost too depressing for words.

That's a very sad image in your post.

Hope the greedy bastards destroying our world will somehow get blocked in their plans to grab the whole world and die as happy rich old monsters in their sleep. That prospect is just too hideous.

What a shame evil has so many adherents.